THE modern American presidency has become a universe unto itself. At an international conference in Chile in November, for example, President Bush was accompanied by 260 staff and security aides, a press corps of 100 and enough planes, cars and communications gear for a third-world army. The powers such traveling parties claim for themselves sometimes preclude the ordinary business American chief executives once used to transact. The government of Chile downgraded a large dinner with Bush in Santiago to a small working session after the Secret Service said it would have to subject the 200 guests, including the leading members of Chilean society, to routine weapons searches.

How did our country, founded in republican virtue and mistrust of a king, end up with what looks so much like a royal court? In fact, until relatively recently, presidents used to run the country through their cabinet officers. It was not until 1939 that Congress created the Executive Office of the President, awarding Franklin Roosevelt a grand total of six administrative assistants. (It evidently took a much smaller staff to create the New Deal than to dismantle it.) The Truman administration set up the National Security Council, which became the presidential vehicle for running foreign policy separate from the cabinet departments. The latest innovation is Vice President Cheney's team of foreign policy specialists for various regions of the world, separate from those of the security council. As Stephen Graubard notes: "The American presidency, as it evolved in the 20th century, bestowed powers on that office never conceived by those who invented it in the 18th."

"Command of Office: How War, Secrecy and Deception Transformed the Presidency, From Theodore Roosevelt to George W. Bush," seeks to describe how the White House has changed since the early 1900's, both as an institution of government and in the nature of the men who occupy the Oval Office. One difference is that presidents are ever more obsessed with their public image while ever more remote from the public. When Theodore Roosevelt -- the trailblazer for the modern presidency -- was about to be sworn in after the assassination of William McKinley, his first act was to insist that two dozen reporters be admitted to the ceremonies. Franklin Roosevelt not only initiated the famous Fireside Chats, but, as Graubard reports, held an astonishing 337 press conferences in his first term and 374 in his second -- a rate of one to two per week. Today, we have Saturday radio addresses for recorded presidential utterances and far fewer news conferences for the unrehearsed ones.

Another relatively recent difference is the new importance of the vice presidency, obvious to anyone watching the current administration. In one sense, though, Dick Cheney is an exception to the modern rule: unlike most vice presidents, he is not running for president. The pioneer, Graubard notes, was Richard M. Nixon, who in 1960 became the first vice president to campaign for the top job (without having already obtained it through the death of a predecessor) since Martin Van Buren in 1837. Five other vice presidents have followed suit. If today's White House operates like a palace, then the vice president usually doubles as crown prince and courtier in chief.

The title of this book is misleading. Graubard, the former editor of Daedalus and a professor emeritus at Brown University, touches only briefly on the subjects of war, secrecy and deception; they appear almost as afterthoughts tacked onto a general history of the 20th-century presidents, all 18 chief executives from Roosevelt to Bush, with one chapter on each (yes, including even Warren Harding and Gerald Ford). That's too ambitious a task for a single book. What we get instead is a narrative that seems ponderous but also hurried, with little room for fresh detail or insight.

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The heroes of Graubard's account are the two Roosevelts, Woodrow Wilson and Harry Truman. Every president since Truman has been inferior, he says: "One need not be nostalgic for a lost innocence to believe that the last decades have not brought to the White House men of that quality." He seems particularly to loathe Dwight D. Eisenhower, "a five-star general out of his depth in the White House." He is nearly as scathing in his criticisms of John Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and both Bushes. Ronald Reagan is characterized as a good actor who was lucky.

Graubard's unfocused book contains much information unconnected to the subject of presidential power yet omits some of the essentials. His Truman chapter describes the problems of the family farm but unaccountably doesn't take up the decision to use the atomic bomb at Hiroshima. He covers some of the transitory developments of cold war diplomacy, but his chapter on George H. W. Bush glides over the collapse of the Soviet Union.

George W. Bush's pre-emptive war against Iraq represents yet another escalation in presidential arrogation of power. The Constitution, of course, specifically gives Congress the power to declare war. (Those who call for a strict construction of the Constitution rarely dwell on this provision.) Truman dispensed with the requirement at the time of the Korean War, as several presidents did later, asserting the need to halt the advance of Communism (Vietnam) or repel an invasion (Kuwait) or stop civil war and ethnic strife (Somalia, the Balkans). With Iraq, Bush has sent 150,000 American troops into battle halfway around the world, absent an active invasion or conflict. He did not bother to seek a formal declaration of war. After 9/11, and the history described in this book, few Americans questioned his constitutional power to act in this fashion.

James Mann's most recent book is "Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet." He is author in residence at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.

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A version of this review appears in print on February 27, 2005, on Page 7007021 of the National edition with the headline: The Imperial Presidency. Today's Paper|Subscribe